APOCALYPSE NOW crushed by plasma?

I bought a 50" plasma tv made by a company called Vizio, which emphasizes low price and the set I bought was at my price point. The reason I bought the thing was because my previous set was one of those huge tube behemoths (36" and ridiculously deep and so heavy it took two of us to haul it down three flights of stairs) but - with letterboxing, widescreen, correct aspect ratio DVDs, the image on the tube set was too small.

I thought a 50" would appease my needs but, weird thing is, it still looks kinda small. I'm not complaining but my fantasy was that the set would overwhelm me and I'd be able to finally see movies like TAXI DRIVER, THE WILD BUNCH, RABID, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, THE GODFATHER, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, DAWN OF THE DEAD, etc. bigger than life. Sure, they're bigger now (compared to the 36-incher) but its not like the movie theater. Well, no shit...

So Vizio sets are a cheap alternative to the expensive plasmas made by the likes of Panasonic, Toshiba, et al, and I don't know if I see any fault in my set visually. I really couldn't tell the difference from my perspective.

But a heartwrenching thing did happen when the first movie I popped in was APOCALYPSE NOW (from the Complete Dossier set) and the opening sequence - the green inferno, napalm explosions, the jungle, Willard's sweat-drenched face (upside down), which looked so beautiful on the biggest screen in Chicago (the now defunct McClurg Court) during an APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX release a few years back - was spackled with all sorts of digital fall-out, shadowing, pixelation, muddy grunge.

My heart sank and I thought I was going to cry or put my foot through the screen. APOCALYPSE NOW, which had originally been shot Technovision, 35 mm (70 mm blow up), with a 2.35:1 or 2.20:1 aspect ratios (depending on theater - I first saw it in 1979 at the UA Cinemas in Oak Brook, Illinois, which was a HUGE fuckin' screen - and they gave you a program as you walked into the theater!), is a gorgeous movie to look at and - of course! - should be seen in theaters but, with technology the way it is today, you should be able to see it pretty close to pristine at home. At first I thought I was ripped off by Vizio - that the set was a cheap piece of shit.

So I went in and fiddled with the settings on both the set and my DVD player and found a close approximation to the way sight and sound should be. I put in THE DEER HUNTER (which was originally released in 1978, shortly before APOCALYPSE in '79) and was blown away at the sharpness of the Michael Cimino film. It was so crystal it almost took on a 3-Dimensional effect. It crushed the Coppola film visually - yet Cimino's film (which takes place in Pennsylvania and Vietnam [actually shot in Thailand]) is muted in outdoor shots in Pennsylvania, explodes in variations of green when in Vietnam but is not as psychedelic as APOCALYPSE.

I can't bring myself to put in APOCALYPSE again, for fear the film will look crappy even with my updated settings. Maybe the definitive DVD release of APOCALYPSE is yet to come- Blu-Ray or HD DVD?